LAWYERS, GUNNERS & MONEY:

In Loco Parentis - Not (KAY HYMOWITZ, April 20, 2007, NY Sun)

So what prevented anyone from taking this creature out of the dorms and off the streets? For starters, as the New York Times reported, privacy and anti-discrimination laws make it almost impossible for school officials to protect students from crazed classmates. If they try to expel a student from a dorm because they think he's dangerous, they can be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Recently, CUNY officials had to pay $65,000 to forestall a lawsuit by a student barred from her dormitory after her suicide attempt and hospitalization.

The only people who might be able to take some action when a student shows signs of trouble — family members — are kept deliberately out of the loop. A 1974 law, known as the Buckley Amendment in tribute to its architect, former senator, James Buckley, makes it illegal for administrators to tell parents almost any details about their child's college life — including serious medical problems — without the student's permission.

Some years ago, when my daughter was starting out at Amherst, the college president explained the terms of the Buckley Amendment to the parents of incoming freshmen. One parent asked in disbelief, "You mean, if my kid were to disappear to California with a drugged-out nut, you wouldn't even tell me she was missing?" The president smiled with just a hint of condescension. "That's right," he said.

Mental-health experts also found themselves paralyzed by laws and bad ideas when faced with a dangerous psychotic. The psychologist at Carilion St. Albans Hospital got a pretty good look at Cho in 2005, yet released him the next day because, as he wrote, the young man "denies suicidal intentions" and "does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder."

Lay people may not find it surprising that a madman, if asked, would deny being a madman. But today's psychiatrists, who have all but jettisoned the idea of the unconscious, use crude interviewing protocols that rely on superficial self-reports and resort to tautological diagnoses that tell little about any underlying disease.

Further, unless someone has committed a crime, civil-liberties laws and limited hospital space make it exceedingly difficult to hospitalize someone, no matter how bizarrely dangerous his behavior.

MORE:
We're not all victims: Not everyone was connected to Virginia Tech, but you wouldn't know it by watching Americans. (Rosa Brooks, April 20, 2007, LA Times)

FIVE DAYS after the Virginia Tech massacre, the friends and families of the victims are grieving — and despite the relentless glare of the media spotlight, their pain is still private. It belongs to them, not to the rest of us.

But you sure wouldn't know it from the way we talk about the tragedy.

In modern America, there's always plenty of trauma to go around. Even if you knew no one involved in the shootings, have never been to Virginia and can't tell the difference between a Hokie and a Wahoo, there's no need for you to feel left out.

NBC bashed for airing Virginia Tech killer's rants (Matea Gold, April 20, 2007, LA Times)

NBC's decision to broadcast portions of Seung-hui Cho's angry rants triggered a storm of condemnation Thursday from viewers and victims' relatives, illuminating the treacherous middle ground between exposure and exploitation in a fast-moving news cycle.

A day after receiving a package containing the Virginia Tech gunman's profanity-laced writings and videos, mailed shortly before his second round of shootings, NBC drastically curtailed its use of the images, as did most of its television brethren.

But the rapid dissemination of the materials and subsequent backlash triggered a debate about where the line gets drawn — what constitutes news, and what goes too far.

Though media ethicists generally approved of NBC's handling of the tapes, Tony Burman, editor in chief of Canada's CBC News, called NBC's airing of the footage a "mistake," warning it could lead to copycat massacres.

Media "ethicists" who claim that the media isn't complicit in these incidents are like medical "ethicists" who find excuses for doctors to kill their patients.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 20, 2007 8:23 AM